I know it's been some time since I updated anything... sorry about that! University and a lack of inspiration have that unfortunate side effect. But I FINALLY have something! Hope this was worth the wait!

Happy Reading!

Chapter 12

Of all the terrible things that could possibly happen at any possible moment, a dead phone is the absolute worst. Anakin grumbled as he sat in the phone store, waiting for one of the supposed phone "experts" to tell him how much money they wanted from him to most likely fix a very, very tiny component that for some reason the phone ceases to work without. It is ridiculous! A scam! But one that everyone concludes is an evil they can live with so long as they get Netflix bundled in or whatever. Anakin glanced at his watch and heaved a sigh as he resisted banging his head against the wall behind him. He's been waiting for thirty minutes! It took an hour for them to actually talk to him, fifteen minutes for him to cough up the support fee and take his phone, and now thirty minutes for them to figure out what is wrong. He'd already explained that he needs the phone for work, but little help that did. He'd hoped sitting in the store would have them hurry up to get rid of him, but also didn't seem to work.

He was bored. No phone to scroll through Facebook, or message friends. He couldn't catch up on shows he'd missed… all he could do was watch the few customers in the store shopping for phones that weren't iPhones. One family looked to be getting a phone for their young daughter. She was obviously immediately attracted to the smartphones, but her parents were pushing her towards the simple flip phones since what does a kid that age need a smartphone for? She probably already has some tablet of sorts at home anyway. An older man was on the other side of the store talking to an employee. By the looks of it, he was trying to figure out FaceTime most likely so he could talk to his grandkids. The employee was visibly stressed, and trying to explain the functions simply but it didn't seem to be going over very well.

The door to the back room opened and out came the man who had taken his phone back to figure out the problem. Anakin was already on his feet walking to meet him at the counter, making no attempt to hide his frustration. "Well?" He asked.

The man smiled kindly at him, "I'm afraid there is some internal damage that is not easy to fix," He said.

"Great, and how much is that going to cost me?" He grumbled.

"Total cost is actually worth more than the phone itself. It is my recommendation that you buy a new phone entirely. We can save all the data on the SD card and I can even offer you a discount if you buy a new phone today!" Anakin barely heard the man besides his blatant 'money, money, money' talk. "We don't actually have this particular phone in stock, but we do have the newer phone which costs 'money, money money,' I can offer it to you for 'money, money, money." Anakin sighed as he reluctantly took the deal knowing it is a ripoff but acknowledging that he has little choice at the moment. He needs his phone for work and this is all he can do for the moment. Pulling out his wallet, he pays for the new phone and resigns himself to spending the rest of his night setting up the damn thing.

His new phone safely packed inside its box and the store's bag, Anakin thanks the employee with a tight smile and leaves, walking the six blocks back to his apartment. He makes a mental note that he needs to find a better carrier but doubts that will ever happen as it seems to be a note that he always forgets until he needs to actually go in and talk to them. Maybe this time he'll remember.

Turning the final corner, he sighed as he finally made it to his street. The entire block was apartments that all looked more or less the same save for the only slight differences in color of the bricks they were made of. As he drew closer to his apartment, his eyes squinted, for a second wondering if he had made a wrong turn or if his eyes were deceiving him. The street sign was correct, the building numbers were also right, but the woman seated on the stone banister of his apartment building was… impossible.

"Padme?"

The woman looked up from her phone, and Anakin was in absolute shock.

She smiled as she tucked her phone away into her pocket, "I've been trying to call you for over an hour!" She said, hopping down from the railing and embracing him in a hug.

He returned it, perhaps a little tighter than was comfortable but he just couldn't believe it. She was here! "What are you doing here?" He asked, pulling back but his hands never leaving her waist.

She gave a shrug, her hands running up and down his arms, "I wanted to see you," She blushed.

He smiled and shook his head, still in mild disbelief. Slowly he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, "I've missed you," He whispered. "But if I'd known you were coming, I would have worn more than just my lazy jeans." He looked down at himself, slightly embarrassed by the ragged appearance of his clothes. There were two holes in the bottom of the slightly too-tight v-neck white shirt he was wearing and the hem of his jeans were almost shredded and the color faded showing all the signs of wear. But Padme didn't seem to mind, in fact, she seemed to almost… like it. She waved off his concern, jokingly telling him how glad she is that he actually has clothes besides his uniform. Inviting her inside, the two of them climbed the steps together, Anakin taking her suitcase in one hand and wrapping his arm around her shoulders with the other as she wrapped her arm around his waist.

His mind was a swirl as he mentally tried to picture his apartment. Had he been given more time he would have put effort into making it presentable. His dirty dishes from lunch were still in the sink and he'd left a can of soda and a pile of old magazines on the coffee table in front of the TV. He'd also neglected to do his laundry as the unexpected dead phone issue had taken longer than he'd hoped. Anakin scratched the back of his neck awkwardly as he led her inside and placed the bag with his new phone on a small table by the door and started to pick up some of the stuff on the coffee table in front of the TV. "How exactly did you find where I lived?" He asked as he started to stack the magazines.

"Sabe told me," She said as she looked at some of his photos hanging on the wall.

"Sabe?" He asked, raising his brow as he tried to remember who Sabe even was. The name sounded familiar but the face was a blur.

Padme gave a shrug, "Yeah, she said she slept over here once but you weren't around so…" She waved her hand around in a confused manner before waving it off. "I was skeptical at first but your name is on the doorbell so…"

He rolled his head back as he started to understand how the pieces started to fit together. "Ahsoka," He said tiredly with a shake of his head.

She scrunched her nose, "Who?" She asked.

"Oh just some hotshot up-and-coming pilot," He said, "Lives a floor above and has a tendency of showing up when she's least wanted." Anakin bit his lip trying to keep himself from smiling at the way her eyes seemed to narrow at him. "Yeah, she must have let herself and Sabe in. My guess is she didn't have any food and didn't feel like going out to get her own groceries like a normal person."

"Oh." He could almost feel her jealousy and it took everything for him not to start laughing at the absurdity. "So, she has a key to your place?"

He chuckled as he walked over to her, "You're cute when you're jealous," He said.

"I'm not jealous," She snorted, tilting her head away from him.

He just laughed again, and pressed a kiss to her temple, "She's basically like my sister," he said to soothe her as he walked to the front door where he placed the knotted garbage bag for him to take out later.

"Oh," She said, her tone and face immediately shifting to surprise. "I didn't know you had—"

"—She's like my sister. She's not really my sister," He said. "She's kinda been glued to me since high school." Anakin gave a shrug as he made his way into the kitchen. "Uh, I was going to make dinner— pasta— unless you—?"

"That sounds nice," Anakin smiled as he turned to get out the pans and noodles out of the cabinets. "So, Ahsoka is also a pilot? I don't think I'm familiar with the name."

"Then you've probably never flown with Plo Koon before."

"I've heard of him," She said, "Older man, voice a bit gravelly, one of those grandfatherly type of guys."

"That's the guy," Anakin said with a snap of his fingers, "Anyways, after she got out of flight school and got hired, the schedule basically threw her on his crew for a solid two weeks or so and I swear the guy never shuts up about her! He talks about her almost as often as he talks about his kids!"

"You have to be exaggerating—"

"Oh, I wish I was, but you've never been stuck in a cockpit for eight-hours with the guy!" He said, sighing heavily as he dropped the noodles in the boiling water. Anakin turned around and leaned his hip against the counter. He really should dust more. He could only imagine the layer of dust that was probably covering the top of the picture frames on the shelf Padme was currently looking at.

Her head turned back to him and he flashed her a smile before she turned back to the photo in front of her. "You were really skinny in this photo," She said, looking back at him again.

Anakin arched his eyebrow in curiosity as he made his way across the room to take a look at the particular picture she was referring to. It was the team photo from his high school track team. Being one of the taller team members, he stood in the back of the photo. Everyone wore the red and black reversible sleeveless jerseys and the loose-fitting running shorts as they all smiled at the camera for the yearbook. His hair had been cropped tightly around his head which did little to distract from his narrow frame but being a track photo, his build was pretty much the same as everyone else in the photo. "Not too surprising when you're running five miles every day," He said.

Padme scrunched her nose and shook her head, "I barely made it through those mile runs my gym teachers made us do every year," She said, "And somehow they always ended up being on the hottest day of the year. I have no idea how you managed to run five miles in that Arizona heat."

"Practice," He said with a cocky shrug, "And if you live in the state long enough, you barely even notice the heat,"

He winked at her before turning to make his way back to the kitchen to finish cooking dinner, smiling when he heard her mutter "I doubt that."

Cooking was not one of Anakin's strengths. While his food isn't absolutely terrible, it still defiantly has the distinct bland taste of something out of a box— which is exactly what it is. True, it served its purpose of providing a quick and easy meal for the days he was home and in the mood for a simple meal but every once in a while there are days where he wishes he were more culinarily skilled like his mother. Those are typically the days he willingly admits to feeling a little homesick but in this particular case, he just wants to impress the beautiful woman who was helping to set the table for two.

Anakin served the plates straight from the pot, filling both plates with the fresh noodles and covering them in a generous layer of red tomato sauce before returning the pans to the counter so as not to clutter the table. And almost immediately after they had both sat down to eat, they started talking casually. She told him more about Luke and how pasta is his absolute favorite food— well, that and ice cream. And he told her more about Ahsoka and how she's a bit of an adrenaline junkie at times, and how she dreams about going skydiving and how it feels like he always has to be the one to talk her out of doing something stupid.

"Wow, you really are like her big brother!" Padme laughed. "And how ironic that you are talking her out of doing something stupid," She remarked, referencing his story about how he tricked Obi-Wan into going whitewater rafting in Colorado.

He frowned as his eyes narrowed slightly, "There's a difference between being reckless and stupid," He argued.

"Oh really?"

"Yes!"

Padme pursed her lips skeptically, "Well, in the end, it's her choice—"

"Not if I have any say. There's no way I'm letting her do something she knows nothing about."

"Oh she has to know something about it if she keeps talking about it," She argued.

"Not you too!" He groaned, "It's bad enough her friends are encouraging her—"

"Oh, I'm not encouraging. But while I'm not very fond of the idea, I do think it's… less stupid than you think it is, especially given how many people actually do end up being able to do it more than once."

Anakin scoffed, "Yeah, but just watch her be that one that doesn't! I mean, would you let Luke jump out of a plane if he wanted to?"

"Absolutely not!" She said immediately.

"It's too dangerous, right?"

Padme paused, her eyes visibly searching for words and slowly he started to smile. She sighed, "Still," She said stretching the word out, "While I would never let my ten-year-old son do that, I have every confidence that a fully grown woman is able to make her own decision on the subject."

He waved off her answer, slouching back in his seat, letting the subject drop as the topic shifted away from his surrogate sister as they finished their dinner. Every little thing about this day just felt so… domestic. Once they had finished eating, he rinsed off the dishes while she loaded them before they settled in the living room to watch something on the TV. He wasn't even watching, too focused on Padme, her legs curled on the couch as she leaned her head against his chest, her arm wrapped around his waist while his was slung over the back of the couch. Anakin smiled down at her, kissing her head and inhaling the scent of her deeply. The simplicity and the natural way they just fit together made his chest ache in a way he has never felt before. "I can't believe you're here," He whispered, shaking his head almost in disbelief.

"Well, we have to meet in more places than just where our jobs take us, right? I mean, they're nice and everything, but the way they happen just makes it all feel…" She craned her head up to look at him, as her fingers played with his shirt. "Fleeting," She said, "Or… or like it's some dream-like world far from the grasp of reality… and that's not really what we want, right?"

"No," Anakin said, smiling broadly at her, "No, that's not what we want," He agreed, shifting, and pulling her closer to him as she snuggled up against him. "And I am so, so glad that you're here… I guess next time it's going to be my turn to visit you in Boston, right?"

Padme bit her lip, "I don't know… I still haven't talked to Luke about things yet…"

"You don't have to tell him just yet if you're not ready."

She shook her head, "It's not just about us… I…I don't even know what he thinks about me dating."

His brow furrowed as his head tilted in confusion, "What do you mean?"

Untangling herself from him, she sat up and leaned her side against the couch, "It's just been the two of us for so long… The last thing I want is to do something that hurts him."

"He won't get hurt," Anakin said, "It might be an adjustment, but he wants you to be happy."

"I know," She sighed, running a hand through her hair, "There's just so much that could go wrong… I don't want him not to like you, but I also don't want him to get his hopes up or crush them."

Anakin understood what she was thinking all too well. His gaze turned back to the TV though he wasn't really watching the program. "My mom raised me all alone. Never even looked at another man for over eighteen years. I always assumed she was happy. She never complained, and she always had a smile on around me. It was only after she met Cliegg, her husband, that I saw her really happy. Part of me wonders if she didn't date all those years because of me. And I know I can't ask her because she'll just deny it. All I know is that he makes her happy."

Without warning, he felt her hands cup his cheeks, and turn him towards her and pressed her lips against his in a fierce kiss. Anakin smiled into the kiss, his hands settling on her lips as he slumped down into the couch. "What did I do to deserve you?" She asked, pulling apart only long enough to get the words out, before kissing him once again. He had no complaints.